Most people know Tiffany as the teenager who took over shopping malls, topped the charts, and became one of the defining pop voices of the 1980s. Fewer people know the Tiffany who grew up between two grandmothers' kitchens in East LA — one German, one Lebanese — learning that food is its own kind of love language. That Tiffany has been there all along. And now, she has written Pop Life: The Ultimate 80s Kitchen Encore cookbook to prove it.
The roots of the project go all the way back to childhood with her two grandmothers. "They would let me play in their kitchen," she says. "Food is everything. And it definitely was for me as a child growing up." The cookbook is dedicated to both of those grandmothers.
As Tiffany began touring the world as a teenager, she turned every city into a culinary adventure. She didn't sightsee in the conventional sense. She preferred eating and would drag her band through the streets of a city and insisted on eating where the locals ate. "I found Kanji in Malaysia," she says. "And this rice porridge was everything. You could put toppings, whatever you wanted on it, like crushed chili paste and cut up green onions and coriander. I'm a spice girl!" She came home and started replicating these dishes for her family. "It was something that my grandmas really enjoyed because they couldn't travel with me."
"I find that no matter where you go, people want to tell you about their food and their music," she says. "It's a cultural thing. It's a bonding thing. They're so proud about it."
Pop Life is a reflection of how Tiffany actually lives. She is what she calls an "Insta party" host, the kind of person who pulls into her Nashville driveway after two or three weeks on the road and immediately starts calling people to come over by 7:00 p.m.
"I make these elaborate meals, but it's my way of de-stressing," she says. "It's my way of catching up with people." Her philosophy around hosting is a deliberate departure from the pressure-filled entertaining of her mother's and grandmother's generations. "They had to have everything done," she says. "And that's a little stressful." Tiffany's approach is different in that she likes to leave a little work for the guests, pull them around the table, make something together. Sausage rolls. Tamale pizza. Whatever sounds good.
Years of cooking for friends with dietary restrictions — "I don't eat this and I don't eat that" — made her extraordinarily skilled at blending flavors in ways that sneak ingredients past even the skeptics. "I got really good with blending things together and doing marinades," she says. "So you're still getting that flavor, but you might not have the onions as a big chop."
Tiffany met chef and co-author Alicia Shevetone after a friend had booked her for a show in Las Vegas. The connection was both immediate and electric. "We went out for cocktails and they started playing 80s songs," she says. The two women, both children of the eighties and both deeply passionate about food, sat down and began to dream.
The result is a cookbook with an 80s theme woven through it and a dual perspective that balances Tiffany's adventurous, spice-forward approach with the classical training of a professional chef. "You get the up level and you get my foodie fun," Tiffany says. The chef's contributions polish and elevate. Tiffany's contributions bring the road, the party, the grandmother's kitchen, and the food prep happening in a hotel Airbnb at midnight before a show. "This is my life and this is really what I do," she says.
Researching the food culture of the eighties was, by her admission, an adventure of its own kind. "There was a lot of color. There was a lot of funky things there that I remembered as a kid that I hated," she says. "So we omitted a lot of that." The jello molds did not make the cut.
The cookbook arrives alongside a spice line that Tiffany launched in the aftermath of COVID. Three blends rooted in her family's culinary heritage and developed over nearly a year of back-and-forth with a professional bottler in Florida. There is a zaatar she calls Rockstar Zaatar, a taco blend called Let's Taco Taco Taco, and a harissa that traces directly back to her Lebanese grandmother.
A savory blend is now in development, built around the spices that appear in what has become one of the cookbook's signature dishes: the sausage roll that shares its name with one of her songs. She launched the cookbook in the UK first, with the sausage roll leading the way. The UK approved. "I was like, thank goodness," she says.
A spicier blend may follow, possibly named after one of her classic hits. "I'm thinking about doing something where I play on the children behave or I think we're alone now or something for a really, really spicy blend," she says.
Three years in the making, Pop Life "taught me to live your dreams," Tiffany says of the process. Her father, who died of cancer, left her with words she often reflects on. "Don't wait," he told her. "Even if you don't have all of it together, just believe in yourself, have fun with it. Some things aren't meant to be perfect, but as long as you're growing, that's the battle."
Pop Life is the story of a woman who has spent her whole life letting food connect her to the people and places she loves, and who finally decided to write it all down, with her family's fingerprints on every page.
TiffanyTunes.com
Tiffany's new single, "Pop Star," drops October 31st.
Location: Rose & Plum Living
Makeup By: Jessica Vaughn; Beauty by Vaughn + Co
Hair By: Misty Rogers; The Parker House on Main
Mossy Rock Creative Team:
Photographer: Samuel Allen; Production: Alana Wood; Wardrobe Stylist: Susan Becker
"...no matter where you go, people want to tell you about their food and their music."